What happens
Billionaire J.P. Merrick, owner of a New York department store, goes undercover as a shoe salesman named Thomas Higgins after a dummy bearing his likeness is hanged outside the store by discontented employees. Posing as a new hire, he tries to learn who the troublemakers are and why workers resent him. He finds himself moving among the staff, including Mary Jones, a saleswoman who questions the store's treatment of older workers. The Lux Radio Theatre broadcast presents Lionel Barrymore as Merrick and Lana Turner as Mary Jones, adapted from an RKO motion picture. This excerpt covers the first part of the story, in which Merrick's hard-driving experiment begins to unsettle him.
A New York department store on 38th Street and the wealthy J.P. Merrick's home, in the early 1940s.
Characters: J.P. Merrick, Mary Jones, Thomas Higgins, George, Mr. Hooper, Joe O'Brien, Mr. Davis
Listen for: Merrick's undercover visit to the shoe department and his encounter with Mary Jones and the discontented employees.
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.